TSBVI Coffee Hour: Collaborating with Families in the IEP Process
4/8/2021

>> Hi everyone. Welcome. We'll get started in a couple of minutes. As you're coming in, go ahead and go to your chat box, there's a little dropdown menu. You want to make sure it says all panelists and attendees in the dropdown menu. That way as you post a comment or question, everyone can see them. Otherwise, it will just come to the panelists. As we're waiting to get started, too, if you want to let us know where you're located, where you're joining us from, that would be great. Hi, Zenobia. Got good Texas representation today. Oregon. All right. Well, we have several announcements. We'll probably have some people join as we go through. I just want to make sure that we have enough time for our speaker to share with us. So if you have a question or comment during the time that the presenter is talking, please post that in the chat box. Again, please make sure that the little dropdown menu in the chat box says all panelists and attendees. Again, that way as you post something, everyone can see what it is that you're commen Your microphone and cameras are automatically muted. We'll share it a few more times throughout the next hour. So you can see the handout immediately and then it will be available later along with the recording of this coffee hour and previous coffee hour sessions that we've done. You can find that on our coffee hour web page where you went to register for today's session. TSBVI/coffee hour. If you scroll down underneath the list of sessions, it says visit the new outreach coffee hour archives, and that's a link that will take you to all of the recordings and handouts and chats. To obtain your CEUs or professional development credit, you'll respond to the evaluation that will be e-mailed from the registration website. You'll enter the code that I will give you at the end of today's session. There is no opening code, just a closing code. We'll stop the session at 12:55 or five minutes to the hour to give you the code and closing announcements. I'm really happy to introduce today's presenter. We have Dr. Lanya McKittrick, she's a research and family support -- we're going to turn the time over to lane. 

>> Thank you, Kate. Hi everyone. Thanks for having me today. My name is lane McKittrick. I'm here today to speak with you about collaborating with families in the IEP process. I'm sure most of you are using many of the strategies I'm going to be talking about. I hope it will be a good refresher mixed in with findings from my past research. Before I get started, I wanted to give you more information about my background. First off, I'm a mom to four boys. Two are deafblind due to usher syndrome. My oldest, Conner is 21 and is a senior at RIT in New York. Graduating in a few short weeks. Dalton, my youngest is 12 and in seventh grade in a mainstream setting here in Seattle. They bring me so much joy and they're my motivation for everything that I do. My career was previously not in special education, but because of my experiences as a parent, I went back to school to get my Ph.D.. in special education. . I I did this to be prepared to help my family and other families. It was challenging to advocate for my kids' needs and talking with other families, I realized I wasn't loan in this. Because other families were having similar challenges and using similar strategies. I'm thankful that I have for the most part had very positive IEP experiences. But because it's low incidences of deafblindness, there have definitely been challenges. My special education research is primarily focused on families of children who are deafblind. The benefits of IEP collaboration and student involvement in the IEP. I teach an undergraduate course in collaboration at the University of northern Colorado. I'm also the chair of the board of the usher syndrome coalition. Back in October, I'm excited to announce that I founded a nonprofit called lane of inquiry to focus on conducting research specific to deafblindness full-time and more intentionally provide support to families. Much of what I'm going to be speaking to today comes from my personal experiences as a parent. Through research interviews with other parents and what I teach on IEP development. How to ensure the IEP is a collaborative process. Because I wear two hats, I'm happy to answer questions both as a parent or as a special education researcher. Feel free to ask away. Much of what I will speak about today is specific to deafblindness, the findings can translate are generalized to families with familiar -- visual impairments. Probably all sensory disabilities. So today? An overview of what I'll be talking about. I'm going to start off talking about the experiences of parents of children who are deafblind and working with IEP teams. Then I'm going to switch over and talk about strategies that -- what did I hear from families. In my research about strategies that they've used. . In working with IEP team members. Then, most recently, I just published a study on the importance of family professional partnerships in times of uncertainty during the COVID pandemic. I'll be talking and giving some -- an voefr view of those findings. I'm going to finish off giving take aways, both generally about collaboration for families of children who are deafblind, but also COVID-specific take aways. We have a lot to learn from this time. So first off, I wanted to start by giving context about parent experiences with special education system. I'm sure it will be no surprise to any of you. IEP teams are -- or IEP meetings can be stressful especially during times of transition. When I talk about transition in this presentation, I don't just mean post secondary transition, which is the most talked about. But other transitions as well. To an IEP or other times like every year when you have I'll talk more about that later. The special education system can be overwhelming and confusing for families. For instance, the pamphlet that you get at an IEP meeting with not wrent en in family friendly language. Families come into meetings and they feel there's a power imbalance. Virtual IEP meetings hopefully have helped a little bit because there's no more of that walking into a room with all the professionals on one side of the table and the parents on the other side. . It's leveled the playing field a little bit. But past research states and I'll talk more about this. But conflict can occur if families don't feel like their voices are heard. This is really important for families of children who are deafblind because of the low incidences of the disability. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what does this mean for families of children who are deafblind? What are their experiences in the IEP meeting? The next few slides I'm going to present are based on a research study that -- on interviews I did in 2018 with 18 parents of children who are deafblind. . So I talked -- in 2018 I interviewed these parents and found that they have a unique challenge in IEP meetings. I can attest to this this as well as a parent. There's no one familiar with deafblindness on the IEP team. That sometimes leads to parents taking on a role of sharing information about deafblindness and about their child's unique needs. This lack of knowledge on the team can bring on challenges related to things like advocating for intervenors and might be -- involvement of state deafblind projects, among other challenges. Parents I spoke with also reported that professionals often misunderstand their students' individualized needs. Primarily because a lot of times what you see at home is very different than at school. If communication is not a good communication in place, that can make that really challenging. . Parents end up feeling like they need to push for services and support and really be strong advocates because they know their children better than anyone. Parents also reported challenges with ensuring appropriate goals on the IEP. There's a lot of discussion about this. Some of the things that parents wanted to see were more future focus. So for the families of children, for instance that, have usher syndrome, you know, they were in like the mainstream setting, particularly those who have very young children whose vision loss was not impacting them in the classroom. These families wished the teens to think ahead about what the children might need in five, ten years. Prince, starting braille. For instance -- even if it might not be needed. A future focus. Another thing about goals is the lack of understanding about communication abilities. There was a lot of mention from families about seeing that their child at home has stronger communication skills than what the school was seeing. There reeling being a mismatch between the home and school experiences that I mentioned on the past slide. And this can cause frustration for families. One parent stated that a team member told her, your child does not have the communication skills to do what the That frustrated that parent so much because saw that her child had the communication skills at home. For some reason, the communication wasn't there and wasn't able to get that point across to their team. And also making sure that the goals are challenging enough. So for some children, in particular, there was a lot of focus owe discussion on IEP teams underestimating abilities. One parent shared that a member of the IEP team says honors classes weren't appropriate for children like yours. Those are the kind of things that families are hearing from members of the IEP team. And then professionals not valuing communication loads. This is especially prevalent during the preschool years when the IEP team is really talking about placement in a deaf or hard of hearing classroom or what would be the appropriate place. . Students lacking self-advocacy skills and not being able to communicate the needs directly. If the skills are not in place, the family and the parents are having to try to communicate those needs on behalf of the child. That's what makes that work -- the curriculum -- Shah self-advocacy so important. Then just having a large IEP team, a lack of access to other families, the emotional impacts in regards to diagnosis and all of the evaluations and things. . I know often, like for our family, it was like a dual diagnosis and over the years it felt like there was always -- you were grieving at a loss of something over time. There's definitely emotional impact. And then there's a lot of talk about transitions as well. I mentioned not just post secondary, but each time when a team member is put on the team, for instance, at the start of each year, but also when a nurse or a teacher is absent, what are the strategies to make sure that those new -- the substitutes or a new team member have all the information they need about the IEP and a child's individual needs. . This visual is from the same research study that I've been speaking about. It was called strategies after -- of deafblind children within IEP teams. . What I found is that past experiences that families had really matter. Both current and past with -- current and past IEP teams. . Those are experiences with, like the challenges that I was speaking about. And then you add that with -- parents' views on collaboration. Is that something important to them? Are they focused on relationship building or something that's not important to them. Both of those past experiences and the collaborativeness, views on collaboration are going to impact how parents go about advocating for their child's needs. . So family views on collaboration really matter. Past and current experiences all play into this. What challenges have the family had with some of the challenges I mentioned. You know, why is collaboration important? Well, because it takes a village, honestly. Especially due to the low incidence of deafblindness, also because there are often really large IEP teams. That makes collaboration among team members really, really important. For instance, if a TBI is working on self-advocacy skills and the teacher -- making sure that both professionals are collaborating and working together on those goals and finding a way of who is going to be the one communicating with the family about the progress on those goals. . We know collaboration can go a long way. Especially the students. So there was some past research in 2014 from blue banning and group. They did some focus groups with a bunch of families to really talk to them about these are special education families, talking to them about the things that impact collaboration and partnership between families and schools. . These seven principles here are the things that came out of findings that kainl out of this seminal study. It's interesting because there's a lot of connection between these seven principles of partnership here and what I heard from families both in -- pretty much in all my past research. . I wanted to give examples in these. In regards to communication, I have a quote here from a family. We have ongoing communication, we don't leave it up to just both -- I think it's been a huge part of our relationship building process if all of the team is we don't wait. If we see something, we talk about it right away. . You know, we have to meet as an IEP team once a year. But a lot of the families are meeting several times a year, both informally and formally as an IEP team and coming up with a communication plan about how and when and what kind of information are we going to be communicating with. About. . The next one is competency. Seeking out professional development. Recognizing when you don't have all of the answers. Seeking out evidence-based practices. The third one is commitment. I saw a lot of this. I'll talk about it during COVID. You may not know all the answers but being committed to find it out. . Advocacy, even the small things. Picking up the phone after seeing something in the classroom or during a session and saying, gosh, I want to really get this right. I think we should talk about it. Maybe the child -- we should talk about adding more support or something like that. . Equality is making sure every team member feels like an equal member of the IEP team. And making sure the team understands the important role of families on that IEP team, sharing information and knowledge that they have about deafblindness and the disability and their particular child. . Respect is also really important. What are families doing at home. Another quote from a family. Personally, I get ruffled feathers when any educator thinks they know better and wishes to disregard anything that a parent has to say. Mutual respect needs to be shown. That's a family that really had a little conflict with their IEP team because of misunderstandings. But it came down to respect. . Then trust really brings us all together. It's kind of the foundation of everything. So you can see how, if you don't have the first six principles here, there's not going to be a trusting relationship between families and schools. . You know, the ways to build trust are exchange of information. Openfully and honestly. Being skilled in doing what you're doing. Honoring a family's cultural and other values. Going above and beyond to show commitment. Having a shared decision-making strategy. And then advocating for a family and child rights. . So -- these are the findings, some of the advocacy strategies that parents in my study back in 2018 employed. I put them in two different categories. The first are indirect strategies. These are -- these families are not coming in with like, hey, here's what I -- this adversarial relationship and approach. But having a team mindset, being firm and being clear what you want and being positive. Building consensus and trying to get the team to all work together. . All of these things kind of relates to doing case management and like building the environment within that IEP team, making sure everybody is in those consensus, there's creativity and flexibility. That we're all thinking ahead and problem solving. There's a lot that parents do to like, make sure that the team is running in that way. But also, like all the team members really have a lot of opportunity to be able to contribute to this environment and the IEP team as well. Then a lot of parents talk about direct strategies that they use. . I'm sure you've heard of parents doing these things. -free planning from the meeting. Making sure you have all the documents ready. IEP meeting management. Making sure there's an agenda, things like that. You know, really being very involved in goal setting. Because there's a lot of discussion about IEP teams, parents have stated if I'm not really involved, what's happened in the past is that the goals aren't appropriate and we'll have another meeting and say gosh, let's keep the same goals because my child wasn't able to meet those. So really manage the expectations and making sure the goals are appropriate. . Ensuring your child's needs are met, big advocacy skills. It's necessary if conflict occurs. Going down and doing things to prevent conflict, you know, doing fa sill day tiff IEPs and things like that. Making sure that their child is involved in the IEP. I have some great examples that in my personal experience involving my soon at the age of 9. When we started to have conflicts with our IEP team and really bringing my son into those discussions and how you can share that information himself. It really made a big difference. . Then parents are also sharing that knowledge. I mentioned that before. You know, sharing information, both about deafblindness, but also their specific child unique needs. . And so you know, back in 2018 I also interviewed 14 parents for research project focused on conflict of families of children who are deafblind. Really exploring experiences, what was the force of that conflict. I came up with similar findings. A few things that I wanted to know. I I've talked a lot about the first two. The lack of knowledge of deafblindness on the team and not understanding the unique needs. But other things are the poor communication. That's a big one. I'm going to keep talking about that throughout this presentation. Also lack of follow-through. The IEP meetings going really well. Parents feeling really great when they leave that meeting. But then things dropping off. Perhaps it's not clear who is going to monitor progress. Who is going to communicate the progress to families? And what's that going to look like. I hear too many stories like I mentioned in the IEP. That just indicates we need to put in -- new appropriate goals. So I'm going to switch gears a little bit. At the end of this presentation, I'm going to be sharing strategies for collaborating generally with parents and then I'm going to get strategies about my findings on this particular study on -- that I'm going to share with you. . So I just published the results of this study on my website. I'm going to share my website link on the handout as well as at the end of the presentation here. You can see the whole research report and then there's a synthesis showing kind of the key findings from it. I also did a blog that I will share a little bit later as well. . So this past year, in addition to my work on deafblindness, I was -- education research policy center. This past year, it was focused primarily on [ Inaudible ] Response. I was part of a team of researchers that was really looking at really the larger districts across the country, the urban districts were responding to COVID. And you know, earlier in the pandemic I conducted some additional research studies related to special education. I was honestly concerned because back in the spring, I was scouring the websites and analyzing these closure plans and later on reopening plans. . There was very little mention about special education in these plans. So that got me really worried. So that was part of the catalyst for me starting to kind of dig a little bit deeper into both special education and also specific experiences of families of children who are deafblind. . And as a parent -- fellow parent myself, I really wanted to understand maybe there's things I'm not seeing on the publicly available websites. Maybe there's more communication between schools and districts and families than what I was seeing. So that was kind of where this study sort of like started from. There was also some other studies that sort of led me to come up with background that I thought was really important to help me kind of figure where to focus my time. . Through some of the other research I spoke with -- about what were they doing and what was their family engagement efforts. And we found that the schools that were doing really well had stopped during the spring, prioritized family engagement over everything else. . Better yet, those schools had strong relationships in place with families before going into COVID. Some of them didn't. I mean, some of them just had, okay, time-out, we need to stop everything, have every team member here at the school reach out to families and just check in with them to see if they're okay and what do they need. Those kinds of things is something that meant a lot to families. And it wasn't about the academics for these schools. It was more than that. It was really about addressing individual family needs. And you know, why is this important? You know, I know we've all heard this, that families and parents were taking on these new roles. I wrote a blog earlier on in the year about a teacher, student, parent triangle. It used to be this interaction between teachers and students every day. Now parents were sort of at home seeing all of this firsthand and how do we manage that triangle and the communication that's necessary to help parents take on those new roles. How is that even possible if we don't have those strong relationships with families? How can that even work? . Especially if families are experiencing the pandemic in different ways. Not all families were able to be home. Some of them needed to be at work. And some were taking care of family members. Some didn't have Internet and things like that. So there's just only different things that families were dealing with. So it was really important to really reach out and come up with an individualized approach for every family. Through this, being a collaboration researcher and all this really made me concerned. . But I'm always like looking for the bright spot. We're thinking, gosh, if we don't have these strong relationships with families, how will we know how to reach these students and their families and make sure that they're engaged. We know that the emotional strain that -- throughout all of this, that all of us educators and families have experienced makes these relationships even more approximate important. . And we know that stress and uncertainty is really not something new to families of children with disabilities. I was amazed with all of the families I spoke with, the resilience and they're so used to having things all the stress and uncertainty, they were very understanding and for giving for the most part about all of this. Really looking at what are the bright spots. So that's what I'm excited about in the study. So a little bit about the research. I had two research questions. I was really looking at what strategies of parents of children who are deafblind found most effective in collaborating with their team during the pandemic. And then what challenges had they also experienced when collaborating with those teams. In doing this, I did a qualitative study. So I interviewed each parent. I interviewed 30 participants and these are parents of children with disabilities. Because of my children are deafblind and I am a deafblind researcherser, most of them are 17, deafblind and 13 and have other disability categories. I spoke with 21 of these parents in the spring. . That was my initial research study. I thought, like everyone else, we would be back as normal in the fall. That was my hope. When I found out that that wasn't the case, I went ahead and did additional interviews in -- in the fall to follow-up with these families and then also just to hear from a couple of new families about what their experiences were. . So my first finding is that you know what I heard most frequently with that communication. How strong communication made a world of difference. Parents seemed tolerant of the lack of communication that happened in the spring because, quite honestly, we were all trying to figure it all out. But when that communication didn't come in the summer, you know, I was talking about some of my past research about still not a lot of mention about special education. . In the summer. It led families to have a really hard time being able to plan for, what was fall going to look like. Similarly, because the team didn't really know -- the teams didn't know what options would look like, in districts and schools hadn't figured that out yet. . Most families do not hear enough, didn't get enough information and communication for the most part or early enough. That led a lot of families and -- quite honestly, like a lot of professionals, scranl bling to figure things out as the school was starting this year. . As this school year moved on and that communication really improved, and we saw about half of the families I spoke with mentioned that they're receiving and appreciate 101 check-ins with the teacher and between parent and teacher, and then also, the more check-ins, individual check-ins with their child too. The teachers and the child and all the related service providers. Really ramping up that communication with the one-on-one check ins. . In the spring, communication was mostly about sharing resources. What are some ideas of things that could be done at home to supplement what a school district was doing. You know, dropping off supplies and giving families websites and things like that, that they could work with their children on. . But in the fall, you know, thankfully, there was more problem solving and individualization going on that was really very necessary just because -- I'll talk more about it later. When we started fall, it was really like a one size fits all kind of approach for the most part coming to fall. . In order to really put in accommodations and additional support, that really took a lot of flexibility, problem solving in order to individualize. I have a quote here on the screen from a family. It really kind of is telling. She didn't have good communication with her IEP team. Very -- didn't really care much. She says, I really feel forgotten by the case manager, honestly. She felt isolated and alone. She hadn't heard anything. . Commitment during the pandemic was a bright spot. I heard so many stories about educators like yourselves going above and beyond. Particularly this spring, so many stories. Educators and service providers dropping off big boxes of supplies and things to families' houses. Even before they got any details from their school or district about what they could and couldn't do, these educators decided to do that because it was simply the right thing to do. Because they really cared about the families that they worked with. I thought that was just really cool to see. . Later in the pandemic, commitment was shown through supporting families in other ways. Showing them how to teach from home, listening to what the families needed, remaining flexible in individualized approaches. All of this, as you all know is not easy. Especially since -- launched with this one size fits all and I know for our family, it took about a couple months for us to get the accessibility kind of figured out. Especially with technology and things. So it took a lot of commitment and team building in order to make that work. . Parent perceptions of commitment seem stronger, though, if they had past relationships with the team to carry them through. That really helped families to get the support that they needed. Throughout all of this, really teams were remaining committed to creating individualized learning plans, even in the absence of holding IEP meetings to do that. Most of the parents I spoke with told me that they really felt more engaged and empowered now as a result of this. I think this makes sense because parents had a front seat to their child's learning. You know, that front seat led to some exciting things. Parents finding new ways to look at things. . New ways to advocate. I know for myself, personally, before the pandemic, my son was really getting behind in school, would come home crying, you know, really struggling. Working so hard together ation an IEP team to figure things out for him. It honestly took me sitting there every day with him -- granted, I have a lot of knowledge about deafblindness. So I was able to act as an intervene or to him. But now I was able to really communicate very specific things that I thought he was struggling with and it was really cool to see our IEP team be able to finally understand and we were able to put in additional supports and accommodations and assistive technology in place so that he is -- he's now working independently. Needed little support from me during the day in order to stay engaged in his class. . Still today, his class is still remote. I have another quote here on the screen from another parent. I wish for there to be some level of empathy but also action because it goes a long way. So we don't have to advocate so hard all the time. . You know, I heard a lot about empathy and respect and all of these things. I know my son has mentioned it, too. About how much more empathetic that teachers and his service providers have been. Instead of just like -- where he said at school it was like, okay Dalton, where is -- what's the progress of your -- these assignments? When are you going to turn these in? Do you need help on these? These conversations because of COVID are now starting, hey, Dalton, how are you today? How are you feeling? Is there anything you need? How is everyone in your family? How was your weekend? Once you got past that, let's talk about action, let's talk about how to work on the assignments that you need. Is there additional steps you need in order to make that happen? . Through all of this, deafblind specific challenges remain. These are challenges that IEP teams, like many of you are still working to address. Accessibility, you know, closed-captioning, interpreters, how do we -- intervene nors, most appropriately in a remote setting. Assistive technology, it was slow to roll out, but I think we're getting there now. Putting new accommodations in place. You know, I know at the start of the school year, my son being on screen 100% of the day, he was breaking down and melting down by around 9:30 in the morning. . So you know putting in breaks, making sure the teachers use headsets so there's no background noise. There's so many new accommodations that families and teams are putting in place. I hope some of these are things that we can put into place and keep after the pandemic. . You know, I also hear from families, about social emotion and disrupted routines. Students not understanding what is a pandemic -- why can't I go to school and see my friends? Why is my routine disrupted? That was a real dhalening. Not being able to see their friends. Not all services are possible in the same way. Like my son has not received -- training in over a year. I worry about regression. There's things like that, that families are worried about. There's so many things I mentioned that we have been able to do. It's cool to see doing braille Legos and things like that in virtual settings. . The logistics of in-person instruction. For some families, we have students medically fragile. It's not possible, like what does this look like for protective equipment, you know. Is it going to be possible for each student to be in person and what's it going to take to make that happen. If not, what does it tyke get the services and supports in homes of families. People can't be in person because of --. Just delaying a -- a lack of support. A lot of families had in-home support. That wasn't possible during the pandemic. That was really a challenge. You know, one family mentioned on here on the screen a quote. We're barely making it through the regular classroom stuff and keeping everyone sane while staying at home. We can all relate. Teachers are feeling probably the fact same way. So I'm always looking for the positive. What can we learn from this? What are the good things that we can take out of this? . As a parent, I can say I learned a lot. I think many families have. Educators have as well. But I think it comes down to this. You know, parents have more control than they did before. Parents are feeling more empowered and confident, feeling like they have more knowledge than they did about kind of what are the classroom experiences now that my child is having. Parents -- that the pandemic has been a good time to focus on nonacademic goals. Self-care. Independent living. Other things outside the core curriculum. A lot of families have said time-out, I'm not working on the academic roles. I'm going to work on things that we simply have time for. Some children are doing really well remotely. That's something to celebrate. . Increased communication, we've seen more texting, the use of new class technology, tech dojo, what's up app. It's helped to increase communication. I have a quote. I've actually enjoyed it because now I can really see what he's capable of and what he's not. All these things I've been asking them to put in place at school are working at home and it's made me a better or more engaged parent in many ways. . So what is on parents' minds right now? What are the takeaways? We've known this before. Each child has unique needs. Children who are deafblind, one size fits all approach is not going to work for them. We need to work out the individual needs of each student and get an individualized approach that works. . We know it requires good communication, problem solving to do this. For some, in-person support is necessary but still not possible. We still need to really -- how do we find ways to support these families? How do we do outreach? And then students have not been able to receive some of those services and supports. So families, like I said are worried about regression. I know I'm worried about regression. . You know, continuing to think about accommodations and what have we learned this year about new accommodations put in place. And what are the things that we can learn from this to -- as we go back in the classroom. Example, my son now has wide transcription. I would love for him to continue to have that when he goes back in the classroom next year. Wree wouldn't have known how important that is to him unless we went through this pandemic. So those are the types of things that are on parents' minds. Also, accessible. I think throughout this year, we've learned a lot about accessibility. We still have a lot to go. I know a lot of families because you would -- with social distancing, we couldn't have staff come into the homes to figure out, troubleshoot FM systems and figure out the interpreters, Zoom, document cameras and lighting, settings on computers to increase font size. These are fings that families are trying to troubleshoot remotely and with the teams. So I think just thinking through how we can continue the discussions moving forward as well. . We've also learned that additional teacher check-ins have been really something that's really important as they're continuing on with those. And then self-advocacy and self-determination are more important than ever before. I know I've seen this. . There's a lot of change. It took a lot of self-advocacy I and self-determination for my son to chat with his teachers about his specific needs. You know, parents are still worried about social emotional impacts. Many districts are just now going back to school in-person. How do we mitigate those impacts throughout the past year. What can we learn from the pandemic about collaboration? I think we can learn a lot. I know I've learned a lot. Many of us have as well. . I think it comes down to this. Relationships really matter. Partnership between schools and families is more important than ever before. Partnership and collaboration between every team member is just -- is critical. And we know from past research that fostering collaboration is difficult when there's stress and uncertainty. It takes more dead ration. I think we've all done a pretty good job in prioritizing relationships and I've heard a lot of positive stories from families and that was really cool to see. . There are things we can do to build these relation shins. The first one is communication, communicate, communicate. Prioritize communication and above everything else. Both individual check-ins frequently are just vital. You know, ask families what they need. Situations change constantly. I can attest to this. You know, I love when the team reaches out to me on a regular basis. Things might have been fine last week or yesterday. But not so fine today. So just being able to have the conversations has been great. Working together to individual eyes solutions and problem solve. Thinking about priorities, considering how can we fit in more of the curriculum into the day. Instead of it being the last thing that we think about, how can we make sure that the priority -- as we prioritize and think about the student's day a little bit differently. . You know, I think we all recognize that to make all of this work, we need to practice self-care because if we are not taking care of ourselves, we're not going to do anybody any good either. I think a lot of us have learned a lot about that. The parents have built up their advocacy toolkit based upon the firsthand knowledge they've received this year. Being there with their child. Just being flexible and respecting others, knowing that this year is difficult for everyone. Understanding that children are also really stressed. We need to work together to be able to make progress for the child. So let's switch gears a little bit. I'm going to go back and talk about non-COVID strategies. You know, first offer, to ensure that someone who is knowledgeable about deafblindness is on the team. Know that you can reach out to your deafblind projects and bring that up to the team. Continue to build the trust relationships with students and their families using the same things that I was talking about earlier, the seven principles of partnership. But it comes down to sharing knowledge with the team, valuing what parents bring, being honest and accountable. And respecting everyone on the team. . Developing a communication plan is really important. I did a blog on communication and reached out to families and saying what information do you want to hear, how often? Phone calls, texting, what's the best way for you to communicate. If you can do that on a regular basis just to make sure that you're providing the information that families need and want on the basis that they want. That makes all the difference. . Just remain flexible and involve the student in all of this. That's one of the bright spots. Seeing how I know I've heard so many stories, I can attest to it, too, how much growth my child has made this past year in self-advocacy. They've been more involved chatting, their teachers more than they have in the past. Really keeping it student centered. You know, balancing the time spent, both listening and sharing, making sure that everyone's voice on the IEP team is heard. But especially families. Follow through on anything that you're -- that you say you're going to do. Avoid jargon. Like I said. The IEP, the special education blog has so much jargon. It's really hard to understand. Talk in language that the family understands. Be sensitive to all aspects of diversity. . Check in with families before IEP meetings to see if there's anything on their minds, making sure there's no surprises. Make sure all IEP team members are collaborating together on everything on goals, monitoring progress, things like that. Find ways to help the transitions that I was talking about that sometimes can be challenging. I know that our team members have put together, helped my son, an all about me every year. So they do a presentation to their teachers and fellow students about how what is usher syndrome. What do you know -- what's there to know about me? What is my -- finding small ways to help with the transitions. . I'm going to end with this last point. Like I said, I just put out a new blog on this. Because as I was reflecting on all of these studies I was doing and what we've learned through COVID, it really kind came back to this one thing. It came back to communication. It really -- I've been thinking about it. Wake up at night thinking about communication. And what I found was interesting. It ties to what I already mentioned. One of the other studies I -- I didn't go into it. IEP team members can can increase parent satisfaction by 68%. By just responding to quickly. If a parent sends an email, just responding back hey, I got an email. I don't have an answer for you right now but I'll get back to you. . You can increase satisfaction by 58% by doing like that. I know -- the small things that I can do because I know that we're all really stretched really thin and really tired and exhausted. That's just like one take away that is really easy to implement. Like what I showed, if we can focus on improving communication, because communication was really a struggle this past year during COVID, it really can make a big difference in building the trusted relationships with families. . I think much of that was lost this year. But really it has gone so much better. I'm really excited about kind of what we learned this past year about relationships and everything, collaboration during the pandemic and I've been talking with a lot of people about, it would be interesting to see like what we can bring forward as we get back to the classroom. What have we learned and what can we bring forward that sticks in the future. . So that's the end of my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions that anyone may have. Like I said, I put the links on the handout. You can sign up for my newsletter on my website and that way you get any resources and other things that I put out about my research studies or anything else. Thank you so much. . 

>> Thank you so much, lane. This has been so good just to, I don't know, to think about and to remember and to recognize. I really like the slide just before this about increasing satisfaction. Right there. Parent satisfaction. Just by responding to parents quickly. It seems so simple and yet just that powerful act of just, I recognize you. I hear you. You are a valued part of that team. That's so important. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for sharing the research and first of all, thank you for doing the research. We were talking before coffee hour started. All the lessons that we've all learned this last year and a couple months, right? The things that have changed our practice. Just from here on out, how we can be better, about being better collaborators with families. . So Sarah, there is no opening code. I just saw in the code. I will give a closing code in just a moment. Mary Becker in the chat says could you talk a little bit more about the idea of intervene nors, this is new lingo to me. 

>> You might be the most knowledgeable about this, Kate. I can share -- I don't know if there's a way to add that on there. NCBB has great resources on intervenors and it's a great guide for IEP teams to talk about what is an intervene or and appropriate. How do you start the discussions in an IEEP team. An interconvenientor is simply someone who understands deafblindness. An educator that's trained in deafblindness. That's there to support the student who is deafblind. There's so many different ways they support students. But it's something that, you know, I think unfortunately not a lot of states, like not a lot of personnel that has gone through that training. You know, I think as a field, we're trying to get the word out that interveners and having someone support a student with deafblindness, some of the specific sensory challenges that are sort of come up in the classroom can't really benefit. . I I saw a video of a high school student being able to keep the student on task and there's interpreters in the classroom, but also just, okay, like how could we need to -- increased font to do this, speech to text. Did you hear what the teacher said? What the assignment was, what you need to do? So really just being that direct support for a student on an ongoing basis. That can be really helpful. 

>> Thank you. That was great. Suzanne Becker, part of our outreach team here put a couple of resources in the chat, too, to learn more about interveners and the role they play in intervener certification. Yeah. Lane, spot on. They are a communication partner, right? I like the word more of facilitator than an intervener. Kind of sounds like we're stopping something, right? But no, their job is to facilitate communication or the student for the student who is deafblind. Take a look at that information. Thank you for swearing your website, lane. That's in the chat, too. It's also in the handout. The link has been shared in the chat. So I am going to give you closing announcement as we wrap up. Our closing code for today is 040821. We'll make sure that is in the chat. Again, 040821. On Monday, April 12th, we'll have literacy for little ones. An overview with Debra sue well, Kathy Garza. On April 15th, we'll talk about Texas two steps. . Texas two steps. That was hard to say. We're not talking about stew. We'll have Joe fwroun -- on April 18th, we have no car keys, no problem. Independent travel when not driving. With two speakers. Check our coffee hour website at the TSBVI/coffee hour for upcoming registration information for those sessions. Please make note, too, on April 26th, we're going to have our CVI -- and friends back. They'll be meeting with us at 10:00 a.m. To help facilitate that time difference, I'll be joining us later in the day for them. But we didn't want them to have to join us at midnight. Again, our session will be at 10:00 a.m. And then that same week, we'll be having a western -- early intervention conference session. About working with native American families. Again, you can find all of the information in our coffee hour website. Please just know, as always, you'll respond to an evaluation e-mailed to you from our registration website. You'll enter that code. I'll give it to you again. 040821. And thatthat. That CEU or professional development certificate will automatically generate when you complete that evaluation. A couple of notes on that evaluation. There are a couple of comment boxes. One of them is anything additional you'd like to share with our presenter and additional comments you'd like to share with our coffee hour planning committee. Please let us know what you are thinking for next year. Are people interested in having coffee hour continue? Do people still want it twice a week? Do we pull back to once a week, couple times a month? If we have it, what kind of topics are you interested in? Please let us know what you're thinking. The whole purpose is to support you as professionals and families. We really want to hear about your thoughts and what you have to say. So thank you very much. That was a lot of announcements. Again, big thanks to Dr. Lane McKittrick for being he Thanks for being here. Thanks Francesca and Linda. .